“Your mother’s right!” he said. “Go! travel yonder, And take the tempest with you where you wander! Nay, but you shall not! Here you shall remain, Though I should bind you with an iron chain, Or hold like a rebellious jumart, look! Dragged by the nostrils with an iron hook! “Yea, though you pine with sickly melancholy, Till from your cheeks the roses perish wholly, Or fade as snow fades when the sun is hot On the hill-sides in spring, go shall you not! And mark, Mirèio! Sure as the hearth’s ashes Rest on that brick, and sure as the Rhone dashes “Above its banks when it is overfull, And sure as that’s a lamp, and here I rule, You’ll see him never more!” The table leapt Beneath his fist. Mirèio only wept. Her heavy tears like dew on smallage rain, Or grapes o’er ripe before a hurricane. “And who,” resumed the old man, blind with rage,-- “Curse it!--I say, who, Ambroi, will engage Thou didst not with the younger ruffian plot This vile abduction, yonder in thy cot?” Then Ambroi also sprang infuriate,-- “Good God!” he cried, “we are of low estate; “But let me tell you that our hearts are high! No shame, no stain, is honest poverty! I’ve served my country forty years or more On shipboard, and I know the cannon’s roar, So young that I could scarce a boat-hook swing When on my first cruise I went wandering. “I’ve seen Melinda’s empire far away, And with Suffren have haunted India, And done my duty over all the world In the great wars, where’er our flag unfurled That southern chief who passed his conquering hand With one red sweep from Spain to Russian land, “And at whose drum-beat every clime was quaking Like aspen-tree before the tempest shaking; Horrors of boarding, shipwreck’s agonies,-- These have I known, and darker things than these, Days than the sea more bitter. Being poor, No bit of motherland might I secure. “Scorned of the rich, I might not dress the sward, But suffer forty years without reward. We ate dog’s food, on the hoar-frost we lay: Weary of life, we rushed into the fray, And so upbore the glorious name of France. But no one holds it in remembrance!” His caddis-cloak upon the ground he threw, And spake no more. “What great thing wilt thou do?” Asked Ramoun, and his tone was full of scorn. “I, too, have heard the cannon-thunder borne Along the valley of Toulon, have seen The bridge of Arcole stormed, and I have been “In Egypt when her sands were red with gore; But we, like men, when those great wars were o’er, Returning, fiercely fell upon the soil, And dried our very marrow up with toil The day began long ere the eastern glow, The rising moon surprised us at the hoe.